To be yourself
by niewypowiedziane
Summary: After waking up in 21st century, Steve is trying to find his place in the new world. Instead of reaching out though, he spends most of his free time visiting graves in a nearby cemetery. After Coulson's funeral Natasha starts to come there, too, and somehow along the way they become friends.


Steve is surprised when they tell him that Agent Coulson will be buried in New York. For all Steve knows, the man was from one of the states across the country, Washington or Oregon, he can't remember. The probable answer is that he didn't have any family left there that would care, but Steve doesn't think it's the right time to ask questions.

The service is private, only a few dozen S.H.I.E.L.D. agents show up, as well as all of the Avengers and several people Steve vaguely recognizes, like Thor's girlfriend; he can't recall their names though. There is a nice speech, short and elegant and Steve can appreciate that, even though he can't particularly concentrate on the words. Instead, he keeps an eye on Clint and Natasha, both dressed in black coats and trousers.

It is June, but the weather is more like in March: damp and mud-scented air, strong wind.

Natasha seems to keep Clint upright, even if she is discreet about that and no one would notice unless they looked closely. Steve watches because he is worried about Clint – the man has just been mind-controlled, he is bound to be shaken – and because he wants to _understand_.

When the service is finished, everyone goes their separate ways. Steve says goodbye to Tony and Pepper and the rest of the team, to the few Agents he knows, and when he finally leaves there are three people left: Clint, Natasha, and Director Fury. Agent Coulson's almost-family.

Steve comes back three hour later, when the sun is finally peeking shyly from behind the milky clouds, drying the last droplets of morning rain from the grass, and finds Clint sitting cross-legged in front of the shiny new tombstone.

'Here you are,' he says, not surprised at all that Clint was aware of him approaching, and stretches out a hand with a paper cup. Clint turns around and stares at him as if he was a ghost. 'It's just some hot coffee,' Steve offers quietly, standing still. 'You've been here a long time and it's chilly for season.'

Clint finally nods and takes the cup, wrapping his hand around it eagerly and fixing his eyes back on the tombstone.

'Agent Coulson was your… partner?' Steve asks after a few long moments of silence broken only by howling wind.

'So what if he was?' Clint asks in reply, his shoulders tensing a bit. Steve wishes he could help Clint somehow, but they don't even know each other.

'Nothing –'

'You have a problem with it, Cap?' Clint cuts in, his voice remotely challenging and a little bit cocky, Steve knows than combination well enough.

'It would be politically incorrect if I said I do, right?,' Steve sighs. 'The truth is, I'm not sure. I don't think so. I don't know any part of the story, but I reckon you… deserved each other,' Steve pauses for a moment. Clint doesn't move at all, he doesn't even seem to be breathing, like a marble monument. 'I wish I could say whatever you want to hear, but… Clint – you must understand, the world, the society, had seventy years to evolve, and I've had what, two months?'

'All right, Steve –'

'I wish he was here to explain everything to me. Together with you.'

'Me too,' Clint laughs sharply, it's bitter and hollow and bone-chilling, but Steve understands. He's done the same a few times after Bucky… after he was gone. The feeling of helplessness just takes over and you know you are so useless that it's almost funny.

Steve stays in the same place, as does Clint, for a few more minutes, then Clint drinks the coffee quickly – it's probably lukewarm at best by now – and stands up.

'Thanks, Cap,' he says. His eyes are red and he's not even trying to hide it, but then, why would he?

'Always, Clint,' Steve replies and he means it.

Clint mock-salutes him and leaves Steve alone in the middle of the cemetery. Steve never meets him there again.

And he comes here every day.

It's soothing and it's one of the places that almost haven't changed: there are only more tombstones around, one more row here and there, some stones a brighter shade of white than the others.

Agent Coulson's tombstone is new and shiny, Bucky's is greyish and spotted after endless hours of rain, and the letters are dirty. There was no body, so Steve didn't expect, he didn't know – but it was written in the S.H.I.E.L.D. files that the grave was constructed in Cypress Hills National Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York. That was least they could do, Steve guesses, to a hero that Bucky was.

It even says this: _James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes_.

Captain America's grave is in Arlington, some Brooklyn cemetery isn't enough for a national treasure; S.H.I.E.L.D. is working on having it… removed.

Steve knew to come back to meet Clint a few hours after the funeral because he still does the same: sits in front of the grave and stares at it for hours, tracing the letters with his fingers, reading the numbers over and over, wondering how can this be real.

So Steve comes here every day. The world doesn't need saving every day, luckily.

He cleans the gravestones and reads name after name, name after name, walking along the long perfect lines of white stones. He has a flower and a candle for everyone he recognizes – there are a few other names from the war, he finds out with time – because even if American people don't do that a lot, Steve has grown used to lighting candles for the dead during his time in Europe and it seems like an great tradition, leaving a sign that someone remembers.

Sometimes Steve just walks, slowly, dragging his legs through the green grass, and tries not to think.

The skyline has changed but it's easy to ignore if he doesn't look up.

Sometimes he just sits in the shade of one of the big trees and sketches endlessly, reminding his fingers how to hold a pencil properly, how to draw fine lines, how to execute what he has in mind. He does five, ten, twenty pages of skeches, and after a few weeks he realizes that there are only two things he buys for himself: food and art supplies. It's good. He doesn't need anything else.

With the nauseating multiplicity of everything around Steve is fine with the bare minimum.

* * *

Steve comes here every day and Clint doesn't come at all. Natasha does.

She finds him sitting under an okay tree, slumped against the trunk, staring at the paper in his lap with hand hanging in mid-air, wondering what to draw next. He has an idea in his head, but it's a bad one. _Unhealthy_, his psychologist would say. Steve lies to the man all the time, perfectly aware that he shouldn't but he tried being honest once and the man didn't get _anything_. They meet once a week only, so it's not a problem.

'Hey, Cap,' Natasha says, taking one last step to hide in the shade. The weather becomes hotter and more stuffy every day, the sun feels almost burning these days.

'Hello, Natasha,' Steve replies, putting down his hand. 'Nice to see you.'

'How are you holding up?' she asks instead of returning the polite phrase. That's okay, Steve might be the only one to even use them these days.

'Okay, good, and you?'

'Just fine. So,' she adds, sitting down on the grass in front of Steve, 'you've got a new hobby.'

'This is not much of a hobby,' Steve corrects her, 'it's just respect, you know. There are so few people who come here, even if they have relatives here – unless it's a fresh wound. And all those people deserve remembrance every single day.'

'Yeah, of course,' Natasha agrees lightly, but Steve can tell that it's just words and not what she really believes. She can have her mask that fools most people, but Steve's always had an eye for detail and for things that other people seem to miss.

'You don't think so.'

'That's what Remembrance Day is for.'

'It's just one time a year –' Steve starts, shaking his head, but Natasha cuts in, looking at him sharply.

'And that's enough. We can't all dwell in the past. It's no good for anyone, doesn't help the dead, makes it more difficult for the living.'

'We can't _all_?' Steve stresses the last word and narrows his eyes, waiting for an elaboration. Natasha just shrugs and doesn't offer anything more._We can't all_ – but she does come, doesn't she?

'Show me your sketches?' she asks instead of answering Steve, after a pregnant pause filled with birds' songs and remote buzz of the city traffic. 'Phil showed me some, you know. There was this book published a few years after you… fell into the ocean. Of course he had the original edition.'

Steve knows the book, he had a meeting with one of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents a few days after he woke up, about Captain America's _legacy_. It involved a lot of copyrights and law things expressed with legal terms that Steve didn't understand, and it was when he learned there is that grave in Arlington.

'Okay,' he agrees reluctantly and opens the sketchbook at a page filled with images of a few modern skyscrapers, including Stark Tower, where he was analyzing the architectonical details and trying to figure out what's so beautiful in them. People keep saying the new buildings are pretty or elegant or even perfect, but Steve can't see it, no matter how much he tries.

Natasha takes the book, places it in her lap and looks at the sketches without a words, tracing some of the finer lines with her fingers.

'These are really good,' she decides in the end. She didn't try to turn the page and Steve is very thankful for that; it's not like he's trying to hide something – but some things he draws are meant to be private.

'Thank you.'

'Can I see some more?' Natasha asks, looking up at him. Steve has an impression that she is looking for something in his face, but he doesn't know what it might be.

'Yes, okay – can I –'

She gives him the sketchbook back and Steve finds a few pages that don't have any faces – there are several scenes from city's streets, from Helicarrier, and a sketch of Steve's old bike.

Natasha slowly flips through the pages he's indicated.

It suddenly feels so right to be here. It's probably around midday, Steve can tell from the sun's position, and the whole world around seem to run, like it always does these days – he just stays in the same spot, unmoving, encompassed by the hot air. Natasha, he muses, even _looks_ more like a proper part of this world with her red hair and dark clothes that contrast with the surrounding greens. Steve is wearing earthy colors, dark green pants and a creamy shirt, and he could probably blend in the nature around completely unnoticed.

'Do you know where the bike is?' Natasha asks a few minutes later and Steve notices she has the page with that sketch opened.

'They told me someone used it after I… died. In Europe, until the war ended, and then it was lost. Maybe someone stole it, or maybe it was just destroyed. It doesn't matter.'

'Doesn't it?'

'You could get another.'

'It wouldn't be the same, though.'

'No, it wouldn't,' Steve agrees, 'but it doesn't have to be. That one was… associated with the war, I – I don't think I'd like it around now. You said it yourself. Cutting ties.'

'Do you _want_ another one?' Natasha asks, handing him the book back. Steve considers.

'I wouldn't have anywhere to go,' he says in the end. The streets in New York are too busy and too messy and Steve knows he'd just get lost all the time. And out there… he doesn't want to go out there. He would be lost even more than he is in Brooklyn.

'Oh,' she just says.

They sit in silence for a few more minutes before Natasha gets up, tells Steve she needs to go and disappears.

* * *

They meet again a week later. Steve is wandering between the graves slowly, making his way towards the big monument in the middle of the cemetery where he wants to leave some flowers, when he spots a red-headed figure crouched in front of Coulson's grave; there is no doubt about who it is.

'Hello, Natasha,' he greets her as soon as he approaches the spot. She doesn't reply but neither does she seem anyhow surprised by his presence. She places the candle she's been holding in front of the tombstone.

'We do that, too, in Russia,' she offers. 'Although cemeteries there look completely different. In most European countries they are different, I think you might remember some.'

'I do,' Steve agrees, playing absentmindedly with the bunch of flowers in his hand. Natasha stands up and looks between the flowers and Steve's face.

'The big monument,' he explains. Natasha turns around and leads. It takes them a few minutes to get there.

'You come here often, don't you.'

'This is not a question,' Steve notes, putting the flowers on the concrete piédestal. 'Yes, I do,' he admits. 'It's almost the same it's been back in my times. We would come here every Sunday after church, to pray for the soldiers that fought for our country, and when the second war started, for everyone who was in Europe, too.'

'Do you still pray?'

'Yes, I do,' Steve replies immediately. 'I know religion is not uber-modern and many young people are pretty depreciative but… call it old-fashioned, but I think a man should believe in something.'

'We were taught to believe in the system.'

'I know,' Steve admits. Natasha just stands there, one eyebrow raised, as if she was waiting for something more. 'Okay, it's going to sound bad, as far as I can understand the political climax and everything associated, but – even that was more than nowadays. Nowadays most young people_ain't have nothing_, how someone I used to know would have said it.'

'They believe in freedom. Equality. Human rights –'

'All of which,' Steve interrupts, 'are so _obvious_ that I would have hoped for the world to figure it out within those seventy years – and make them the basic principles. That you all still need to remind each other of them is pitiable… But those aren't things to believe in. It's like believing in the air that you breathe, in the earth that you walk on. You can fight for them, yes, but it shouldn't have anything to do with faith.'

'You've got a strong opinions there for someone who constantly claims to be still adjusting,' Natasha comments with wonder, asking him by a hand gesture if they should go. Steve just starts walking instead of replying.

'Because it doesn't have anything to do with the times we are in. The definition of being human hasn't changed, as far as I know, and I don't want to be here when it does. I've had an encounter with… _more than a mere human_, he'd have probably called himself. It was more than enough.'

'I guess so,' she admits. 'What about the whole _new_ definitions though? Of freedom and equality and all that? People talk a lot about that nowadays.'

'I,' Steve starts, but if he wanted to say everything that is on his mind, it would be a long and messy monologue, made of more questions that sentences. 'I just don't understand it, Natasha,' he says in the end. 'And I don't think I want to talk about it – not now. Maybe in a few weeks. After I've done some reading and some thinking.'

'Okay,' Natasha agrees. 'I can give you that much.'

They end up getting French fries from a street vendor, and then go separate ways.

* * *

The next time she comes, Steve is sitting in front of Bucky's grave, dressed in his running clothes. He doesn't have a bag with the sketchbook or flowers or candles this time; it's just him, the graves and the sun. Until Natasha comes, her steps to soft that Steve would have never heard her if it weren't for super-soldier hearing.

'You okay, Cap?' she asks; Steve can hear something he would call slight apprehension in her voice. 'No, you don't look like you're okay,' she adds before he can say anything. Steve tries to think of something good, something appropriate to say, but the words don't come.

Then he can feel Natasha's arms wrapping around his shoulders and locking around his chest slowly, softly, giving him a possibility to flinch away from her touch, but he doesn't. He felt her moving closer, but he didn't move or look at her or give any indication that he knew what she was going to do.

Her hands are small, he notes, but warm; it's a hot day, yet he can still feel the heat of her palms through his t-shirt.'

'I'm sorry,' he says eventually.

'What for?' she inquires immediately without moving an inch.

'I'm not really dressed to be here and it feels wrong and I – I'm not in the mood for talking. Or… anything much. Sorry,' he apologizes again, feeling Natasha's embrace tighten around his tired body.

'You were running,' she states, obviously waiting for him to elaborate. 'Long route?' she prompts when he doesn't say anything.

'Yeah, I don't know… twenty five miles, maybe, I didn't pay attention –'

'So what was the reason?' she asks, letting go of him to sit down on the dry grass.

'Who says there is a reason?'

'There's always some.'

'Mhm,' Steve murmurs, but it takes him a few minutes to speak. 'It was a meeting with my therapist.'

'Oh.'

'He doesn't understand me – and no, it's not just me feeling like that. He doesn't. He is used to people who think differently, who are constructed differently, and I – I don't fit in there. He asks a lot of questions about things I don't want to talk about and –'

'Things like?'

'My family. My dad. Bucky.'

'Every therapist would,' Natasha notes, frowning slightly.

'I know, I've learned. This is the third one.'

'… I didn't realize.'

'You don't have to preoccupy yourself with me, Natasha,' Steve tells her with a small smile. 'Anyway, it's bound _not_ to work because I don't want to cooperate, and I won't be seeing anyone else –'

'Maybe you just haven't meet the right person yet.'

'I don't know,' Steve admits, 'but I've played along because I wanted to be nice. S.H.I.E.L.D. won't make me do something I don't want to do anymore. And I don't need this… You know – Tony joked about this a few weeks ago, that in America everyone sees a therapist for something, and I laughed at that because I didn't realize it was so close to the truth. It's just so strange to me. All those people who want to go to a stranger and tell them all about their lives… I understand sometimes it's necessary, we had mental illness back in my times – sure, it was a stigma, but we understood that it was a real problem, some of us, at least, and I had soldiers with shell shock and it wasn't pretty – but most of the time, people just exaggerate. They – they need to talk to someone. And I… well. Everyone has some problems, difficult times, low moments, but it's not a reason to get medication or to see a doctor. I don't need that,' Steve pauses to take a breath. Natasha is sitting cross-legged now – she took her shoes off, Steve notices – and observing him inquisitively. 'I have my sketchbook and my journal and my brain and I can… deal with all of this myself. I'm not a fragile toy, I'm not depressed, I'm just – grieving. You sure know. I just need time. That's it.'

Natasha laughs at that mirthfully, throwing her head back, rays of sun reflecting in her dark sunglasses. It's the first time Steve hears her laughter, before it was nothing more than a few smirks or a chuckle here and there, especially in Clint's presence.

'What?' Steve asks, narrowing his eyes a bit and running ahead through his hair, still slightly damp from sweat.

'Out of all things you could ask the brave new world for,' Natasha explains, amusement clear in her voice, 'you ask for the only one that it's always short of.'

Well, Steve can't help but laugh himself, although it is slightly more bitter.

'If you tell me it's okay,' Natasha says when they've calmed down a bit, 'I could rephrase some of what you've just told me, and make sure S.H.I.E.L.D. won't bug you with therapy and all that anymore.'

Steve takes a moment to think about it.

'I guess,' he agrees in the end. 'But I would prefer if you –'

'Trust me, Steve. I won't tell them anything you wouldn't want them to know.

Steve pauses, again, and finally gives Natasha a shy smile instead of a verbal answer, but he knows she will understand. He doesn't know why, but he has a feeling that he _can_ trust her.

* * *

'Thank you,' Steve says as soon as Natasha comes up to him maybe two weeks later – okay, twelve days, he's been counting. But honestly, there isn't much happening in Steve's everyday life, so it's easy to keep track of things.

Steve told S.H.I.E.L.D. that he won't go to therapy anymore and they just said okay.

Natasha inclines her head and then sits next to Steve.

'Teach me how to draw,' she says, surprising Steve a whole lot. Then she takes out a perfect good-quality sketchpad and a set of neatly sharpened pencils, the same brand that Steve has. 'I know pretty much nothing about drawing,' she adds, setting the pad in her lap, 'but I am willing to learn some lines.'

Steve doesn't bother to tell her that it doesn't work just like that, she surely knows, but there are some basics he figures he can teach: measuring proportions, shading, contour lines…

'Why are you here, anyway? Weren't you supposed to be out for an op?' Steve asks, trying to fish his favorite pencil out of his bag; it's hiding somewhere between all the random items he likes to have with himself.

'Finished early, got a sprained ankle, benched for two weeks,' Natasha recites. That makes perfect sense.

'Sorry to hear that,' Steve tells her just as he finally manages to find the pencil. 'Ready?'

Natasha nods eagerly, tying her hair in a messy bun so that it wouldn't disturb her.

'So, let's go over with how to hold a pencil,' he starts, smiling a bit. It's nice to, for once, be the person who can teach instead of having to learn all the time. 'And then we can get to lines.'

For the next two weeks they meet every morning, in the same spot. They are lucky that the weather is continuously beautiful.

Natasha is pretty good for someone who's never had any training. She just has a good sense of artistic quality, Steve figures, and is persistent enough to draw one thing over and over until she deems it perfect. There is something ethereal, something soft and delicate to her drawings, even if they are simple and slightly child-like from the perspective of someone with much more experience. Steve is no expert himself, but drawing is one of the few things he feels confident about.

When he examines one of her drawings – a woman in a dancing dress, standing in the middle of an empty stage – she notices his curious glances.

'I used to dance,' she confesses in a low voice, filled with more emotions that Steve has ever heard from her. 'Before – before everything happened. The program. I used to learn ballet.'

'Oh,' Steve is surprised that she wants to share something more about her past; she never talks about herself, unless it's about work. 'I'm sure you were amazing.'

'Just very good,' she laughs, but it's short-lived. 'I've missed it ever since.'

'Why not just start dancing, then?'

'I don't…' she stumbles, doodling something on an empty page, 'It's like a chance that I had, back then, and now it's gone.'

Somehow, Steve knows exactly what to say.

'I had a dance with my dame back then, within my grasp. But then I flew the plane into the ice and the chance was gone. We could make up for it.'

'We're in a cemetery,' Natasha reminds him, but Steve shakes his head. It's just a place where dead people lie, it's not even a religious site. It won't hurt anyone.

'No one's here, no one will see us,' he counters, putting his sketchbook away and standing up. 'I know it's not what you used to do and I am clumsy and I've never danced –'

'Relax,' Natasha says, suddenly at his side. 'I will lead. You'll do fine.'

Steve does as she says and they dance between the trees, stepping out of shade occasionally and feeling the strong sun smothering their skin, and Steve can't stop thinking that this is one of the nicest things anyone has done to him since he woke up.

* * *

It's the first day of autumn, a warm cloudy day, stuffy air promising an afternoon thunderstorm, when Natasha finds Steve sitting by Bucky's _fake_grave – he can't call it anything but that – just staring at the white stone.

'Why are you always so sad, Steve?' she asks, not sitting down this time.

'You know,' Steve replies, looking up at her and then fixing his eyes on the cityscape far behind the trees, 'I keep hearing people complaining that they were born in wrong times, that they don't fit here, there are songs about this, and books, a lot of comments, but I – it's _literal_ for me. I've been born in different times, now I'm living here, _today_, and nothing fits.' He pauses to take a breath and calm himself down a bit. 'When I think of those decades in between, it's not just sexual revolution, Vietnam War, disco music and the Internet. I – I'm not trying to be ignorant. It's just that when I read it, or watch photos or movies, there is this longing that I can't quite contain – longing for times that have passed irrevocably without me. And they were _my_ times. I should have been there, by all counts, I should have lives through it all, I should have grown up through all those experiences… It was nothing but a freak chain of accidents that deprived me of that, and it just.. it aches.'

'It aches,' Natasha repeats, contemplating the word, and then shakes her head. 'When I came here, I was just _angry_ because I saw everything that's been kept away from me, from all of us, for years. Not from Russia in general, because it's just a different world, it's natural it would be different, but from us, the girls from the program… Even if we were aware of some things, they were beyond our grasp. And here, all those little things have always been within the reach of most people and I – it might sound silly, but I knew I would be a different person now if I wasn't cut off from all of it. For a long time I thought I would have been a better person and I turned being disappointed with myself into art.'

Steve frowns and looks up at her. He isn't sure he's the right person to be told those kind of personal things when he is constantly confused and awkward and not anyhow helpful, but he can't exactly stop her. It feels good to know someone trusts him – and not just Captain, the perfect American soldier, fighter, citizen.

'What happened?' he asks, because it's clear that Natasha is not that person anymore. She is… put together, Steve would call it. Satisfied. Fantastic.

'I found someone who was willing to repeat to me this: _you are exactly the person you should be_. Until their lost their voice. Until I believed. It worked.'

'I'm glad. I like the person you are.'

'Thank you, Steve,' she replies earnestly. 'I can say the same, you know.'

'Thanks –'

'You. _Steve_.'

'You know, everyone in the world loves Captain America. Maybe except Tony,' Steve snorts, ignoring Natasha's obvious intention in stressing his name, 'But the point still stands – that is how the world knows me now.'

'Bullshit,' Natasha growls and crouches in front of Steve to look him in the eye.

'In a way,' Steve clarifies, 'but it's a label. It's self-definition. I don't know who I could be in this world anymore, I haven't figured it out yet. Might be the toughest one,' he chuckles darkly, but Natasha doesn't seem to share his humor. 'I don't know how to define myself anymore, Natasha.'

'Well, I think I've got a few words,' she declares, a tiniest of smiles crawling onto her face. 'You're – a good man. An artist. An idealist,' she hesitates for a second, before adding, 'A best friend.'

'Am I?' Steve asks, raising his eyebrows quizzically.

'I hope,' Natasha replies easily.

'Thank you,' he says quietly, closing his eyes, and a moment later he feels Natasha's arms wrapping around him in an embrace again. She is so diametrically different from what Steve thought Black Widow would be. Maybe Steve will manage to free himself from being what Captain America should be.

'How about we get some Russian food?' he asks a few moments later with a mischievous grin. 'Is that unpatriotic enough?'

'Could be,' Natasha decides seriously. 'Even if it wasn't, I know this great place. It's just a few stops by metro.'

'Okay,' Steve says, standing up and brushing the dust off his trousers. 'I just hope it's not some extremely elaborate scheme to replace my therapist with you so that S.H.I.E.L.D. would know what's going on in my head.'

'Pinky swear that it's not,' Natasha replies, following him. Steve frowns.

'Pinky swear?'

'Ah. After your times… Clint taught me this one when I came here, it's – you hook pinky fingers and it's a sign of an eternal oath. Mostly among teenage girls, but you know Clint.'

'That sounds… legitimate,' Steve decides, almost managing to keep his face straight. 'Thank you, Natasha,' he adds, offering her a smile.

'Nat,' she corrects him, taking his hand, like kids to with their friends in all those family movies. 'My friends call me Nat.'

'Thank you, Nat,' Steve rephrases, digs his sunglasses out of his bag and puts them on; Natasha follows his suit. The dry grass rustles under their feet as the march in unison.

Steve has a feeling that things might work out yet.

* * *

**A/N: **Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed the story! Feedback is always very welcome :)


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